This is a friendly reminder that you must now renew your driving license and road tax. JPJ will no longer give members of the public leeway on this matter, as all offices have resumed operation and grace period has now officially expired.
However, if your road tax, driving license or vehicle ownership certificate was washed away in the recent floods, there is a small consolation for you. JPJ will not be charging any replacement fees for these documents. You must bring along a police report to confirm that the document was lost or destroyed as a result of the flood to claim this free replacement though.
Background on extended grace period
Back in September 2021, the Minister of Transport, Datuk Wee Ka Siong announced that JPJ would be pushing the deadline to renew driving licenses and road tax stickers date back to 31st December 2021. The initial suspension was due to the closing of Pos Malaysia outlets, JPJ offices and UTCs during the mid-2021 MCO, which saw almost a complete lockdown of all but the most essential services. The extension of the deadline was also prompted by just how difficult it was to secure an appointment or actually get a new driving license after the same offices were reopened. There was an issue of booking appointments, keeping appointments and having enough stock of driving license and road tax blanks, as many parts of the industry were still shut down and JPJ’s online booking system was archaic and poorly managed. Read about our experience here.
We should also note that if you had a traffic summons to settle, you may have missed out on a massive discount. This too was extended to the public until the end of 2021.
However, you can still take advantage of the ongoing sales tax discount/exemption. This will be continuing until mid 2022, unless the government deems it necessary to extend it further. This has happened numerous times before, so it might actually happen again if Omicron proves devastating.
